Toward a cosmology: why has a book of cosmology be written by a psychiatrist?

	Prof. Jean-Claude Gens, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Burgundy, France; Co-director, Center of Phenomenological Hermeneutics, University of Paris IV, France
	4:30 – 6:30 pm
	Room 220, Fung King Hey Building

Abstract: Toward a cosmology (1936) is Minkowski’s last philosophical book, which reverberates with the latter and last lessons of Merleau-Ponty about “nature”. This book investigates the possibility of a new comprehension of nature compared to the one given by the so called “natural sciences”. Minkowski’s notion of nature implies a critic of the traditional dualism between mind and body, history and nature, and has to be understood in the frame of a philosophy of life, so that the cosmos has itself to be thought of as a living cosmos.